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If you are working, do you go on "holidays" or take vacation, only when you plan a trip or do something special/that you normally wouldn't do?
I tend to try to take vacation only when I plan to go somewhere out of town or do stuff I normally cannot find time or better, do something special --ie. spend time with family member(s), friends/visitors from out of town.
My rationale is that I've worked to earn that time off and hence, want to use it well.
I use most of my vacation days for actual vacation travel, but I also take a handful of days off throughout the year to just relax or to spend a special day with my husband doing something fun.
I really don't take vacation days. My work schedule is such that I work six nights in a row, and then have the following 8 off, so I could theoretically take a vacation every other week if I wanted to. Most of it I spend just relaxing and getting things done at home, because while my schedule sounds nice in theory, I do work 72 hours in 6 days, and it's all nightshift. So flipping back to a day schedule is a major task on my days off.
Since I work part-time for a bunch of different companies and as an IC for several others, I don't get paid vacation time or paid sick time. I can take off days during the week depending on how much work I have and how I schedule that work. This week I have very little work, so am working Tuesday and have a meeting on Thursday. I actually am doing one job on Friday because it's the first day that job can be done and next week I've got a pretty full 5 day work week so what I can get done Friday of this week will make it a bit less stressful next week. So I'll end up with today and Wednesday off this week, but that can be pretty much my entire year of how I schedule my work. If I need a full week off to go somewhere that I do have let my different managers/schedulers know a head of time.
Well, before the end of this year, looks like I will have to blast off a few days off, not in the best way but hey I spend more time with dearie.
We discovered hotel accommodation is more expensive in the mountains before New Year's DAy. I also had piled up some days which I can't carry over next year. Long story...which relates to our benefits policy and compressed work week days off.
I can see it already....more advance post dated blogging which later it will become too busy for me to think creatively.
I'm not working today, and I'm just home hanging out and doing some other work. This is definitely a good use of my vacation time. I picked up the kid from his dad's, we had breakfast together (which included pumpkin bread baked this morning and still warm from the oven), opened presents, and he's now snoozing on the sofa. I don't get many days any more where I get to watch the kid sleep; I'm glad to have this one.
I also take time off to do things other than hang around, though; my last vacation was to present a poster session at a conference in Paris, and my next one is to present a poster session at a conference in Austin, these conferences in a field completely unrelated to what I do for a living. (I'm having a blast with this!)
So I use vacation time both ways: to do something special away, and also to do something special (hang out around the house!) at home.